Without limiting the scope of the invention, its background is described in connection with current methods of clamping semiconductor wafers to a clamping surface, as an example. Wafers have generally been processed with the active face up. Recently however, face down processing has been used to minimize particle contamination on the active surface.
In single wafer processing using face-down processing where the wafer needs support, past practice of clamping the wafer to a another surface has resulted in covering portions of the wafer surface. As a portion of the wafer surface is covered by the clamping device as it overlaps onto the surface, neither deposition nor etching, for example, can take place under the covered portion of the wafer surface. As a result, such wafers generally don't have active devices close to the periphery.